Thursday, March 21, 2019

Allo and Oracular Rufio have decided to return to their homes and stop hunting. Perhaps they found a life of monster slaying too dangerous, or perhaps they found the home life to have other attractions.

Zaphod rises early. They swiftly kill a strange squidlike monster rumored to carry Cryptic Clues and more of the same, a cockroach. They return to town with a stomachache that refuses to go away, even into the late hours of the night.

Some people believe they witnessed Derrick hunting a bat, but Derrick claims nothing happened. A strange set of events, to be sure, but not all that surprising here in the breeding grounds of the supernatural.

Naught succeeds in hunting five monsters in the cave and sets up camp there.

In the night, more monsters come, as always. The shrill sound of cockroaches only intensifies as the night grows deeper.

There are:

4 monsters in the Overgrown Forest,
4 monsters in the Dank Cave,
4 monsters in the Labyrinthine Canyon,
1 monster on Shadow Mountain,
3 monsters in the Eldritch Ruin, and
1 monster in the Dragon’s Lair.

===Fruit===
‘ ‘A delectable treat not commonly found in the Dragonwood’ ‘
* When an Adventurer gains a Fruit, use the FRUIT command in the GNDT to determine what fruit it is:
** Kiwi: This especially rare Fruit trades for 15 coins instead of 10
** Grape: Gain an additional Fruit
** Cherry: An Adventurer may eat this Fruit to increase their Support by 1
** Pomegranate: An Adventurer may eat this Fruit to increase their Health by 1
** Mango: An Adventurer may eat this Fruit to increase their AP by 1
** Coconut: An Adventurer may eat this Fruit to increase their Experience by 1

Add the following to the List of Trades:
1 Fruit → 10 coins

If a number of EVC’s equal to Quorum include the phrase “Clarity over flavor,” replace all instances of “eat” with “destroy”

I was unreasonably excited when I found out there was a FRUIT command, and have been trying to find a way to include it ever since.

Hello, fellow Adventurers! I’m looking to sell some items because I’ve heard that letting go of material possessions can help relieve stomach ailments, and I’m about ready to try anything.
I will sell off my Carving Knife for 15 coins and my Shrieks at 7 coins a piece.

I’ve already Camped so I can’t trade right away, but comment if you’re interested and we can work something out after the next Respawn.

Wednesday, March 20, 2019

In the Hunting section of the Ruleset, add the following after “Remove the Target from the list of monsters in the Wilds it is in.”:

**Optionally decrease the frequency of the Monster’s monster type in the Bestiary by one.

Add the following to the Monsters section of the Ruleset:

A monster type’s frequency may never be changed to a negative number.

This gives the option for us to shift the balance of Monsters to stronger ones and phase out bats/cockroaches/etc. If people like this mechanic, we could add items and/or spells that also adjust with frequency, or some consequence of total extinction. I’d like to add some more Monsters in, but the pool is getting crowded.

=== Enlarge—Level 3—CC 2 ===
* Set the hit points of a Monster in your Location to double the current value, rounding up. Denote this by adding “(HP: X)” after that Monster’s listing in your Location, where X is the new hit point value.

=== Minimize—Level 4—CC 4 ===
*Set the hit points of a Monster in your Location to half the current value, rounding up. Denote this by adding “(HP: X)” after that Monster’s listing in your Location, where X is the new hit point value.
*May not be used on a Dragon

To the bottom of the “Spawning” section of the Ruleset, add the following:

*Remove any parenthetical notations or modifiers from all monsters in the Wilds

Remove the second “Shadowy Tome” item from the Marketplace. Edit the remaining Shadowy Tome item such that its attack power is 3 (instead of “3,”) and it has a modifier which reads “Can only be used by an Adventurer with Magic 2 or higher.”

Edit the Crystal Ball item so that it has a new modifier which reads “Can only be used by an Adventurer with Magic 1 or higher.”

Fixes the double tome, makes the dark arts a skillful practice, and adds some spells.

The Adventurers set up camp. In the night, the number of monsters of nearly every known manner appear all over the wilds, especially concentrated in the cave systems.

As the Adventurers wake up, they notice an energy boost, as if they could fight far more monsters today than they could yesterday. The invisible observer has obviously blessed them with renewed strength.

There are:

2 monsters in the Overgrown Forest,
7 monsters in the Dank Cave,
3 monsters in the Labyrinthine Canyon,
2 monsters on Shadow Mountain,
3 monsters in the Eldritch Ruin, and
1 monster in the Dragon’s Lair.

Dusty Old Spellbook still exists after my enactment. Is there a better way to “Move” pages than by editing their text? Delete this message if its resolved.

Adminned at 20 Mar 2019 11:50:26 UTC

In “Spells”, replace the first sentence with:

The [[Adventurers’ Spellbook]] page is ordained for Spell tracking, and may also be referred to as the Spellbook.

Move the page called “Spellbook” to “Adventurers’ Spellbook”.

Move the page called “Old Dusty Spellbook” to “Spellbook”.

There was already a wiki page called “Spellbook”, which I moved to “Old Dusty Spellbook” so that Spelling Bee could be enacted. But that breaks any old dynasties’ links that are pointing to Spellbook. Let’s rearrange the shelves back how they were.

Friday, March 15, 2019

Create a new section of the Ruleset titled “Spells” with the following text:

The [[Spellbook]] page is ordained for Spell tracking.
In the Spellbook, there is a list of Spells. Each Spell has a name, a level which is a positive integer, a Casting Cost (CC) which is a positive integer, and zero or more modifiers. Spells in this list are always arranged in ascending order of level. The Spellbook also contains a list of each Adventurer and their known Spells.
Spells cannot have an Attack Power or Scavenging Power.
At any time, an Adventurer in the Town may spend 2 AP to add a Spell to their known Spells if their Magic is equal to or greater than that Spell’s level.
At any time, an Adventurer may select one of their known Spells and spend a number of AP equal to its casting cost to Cast the spell, applying all effects described in the Spell’s modifiers.

Add a new page to the Wiki called “Spellbook” with the following text:

== Known Spells by Adventurer ==
Allo:
derrick:
naught:
Oracular rufio:
pokes:
Trigon:
Zaphod:
== List of Spells ==
=== Brain Boost—Level 1—CC 1===
*If you gained Experience from Supporting one or more of another Adventurers’ successful Hunts since the last Respawn, increase your Experience by the amount you gained from Supporting one of those Hunts.

=== Siren Call—Level 2—CC 2 ===
*Establish the Pool as the set of all monster types from those in the List of Monsters whose Ecology matches your Location. Randomly choose a monster type from the Pool with the probability for each being that type’s frequency over the sum of all type’s frequency. Add a Monster of that type to your Location.

=== Mystical Amphetamines—Level 3—CC 0 ===
*Decrease your health by 6 and increase your AP by 2
*Cannot be used by an Adventurer with 0 AP

Spells return, but without Scavenging Power and a smaller starting set.

Thursday, March 14, 2019

Each Adventurer has a location tracked in the GNDT, which is one of: “Town” (the default), “Overgrown Forest”, “Dank Cave”, “Labyrinthine Canyon”, “Shadow Mountain”, “Eldritch Ruin”, or “Dragon’s Lair”. Each location other than Town is considered to be a “Wilds”.

At any time, an Adventurer may spend 2 AP to change their Location to any other except the Dragon’s Lair. An adventurer may spend 2 AP and destroy a Cryptic Clue to set their location to the Dragon’s Lair.

Amend “Monsters” by changing “a frequency, which is an integer between 1 and 10” to:

a frequency, which is an integer between 0 and 10

Amend “Action Points” by changing “4” to “5”

Amend “The adventurer sets their AP to 4” to “The adventurer sets their AP to 5”

Amend “Hunting” by:

removing “have not done so since the most recent Respawn,”, the first bullet point of the list defining Hunting, and any bullet points in said list beginning “Decrease the Hunting Adventurer’s AP”

adding a bullet point to the end that reads “Decrease the hunting adventurer’s AP by 1.”

Amend “Spawning” by changing the bullet point beginning “Establish the ideal monster population” to read:

* Establish the ideal monster population (IMP) as (two times the number of active Adventurers) plus five.

Create a new monster:

Name: Dragon

Hit Points: 20

Frequency: 0

Ecology: Dragon’s Lair

Spoils: Dragon’s Head (1)

Description: The most powerful monster in the Wilds. It’s commonly believed that dragons possess powerful magic that can control all the other monsters.

Add to the list of items:

Name: Dragon’s Head

Description: The head of a dragon, still dripping with ichor. This prize will definitely earn you favor in the Emperor’s court.
Modifiers: * A player with this head in their possession can destroy it to achieve victory

Add a Dragon to the Dragon’s Lair.

This is flawed, I know. But we need a goal. This dynasty is stagnating. This proposal should up the ante quite a bit. I’ve tried to balance everything out well. The number of monsters doubles, but the number of monsters you can hunt triples or even quintuples, if you’re not planning on going anywhere. Clearly necromancers and squids are the best thing to go after, but if someone beats you to it, you can still clear out the rest of the monsters in hopes of upgrading yourself to be able to attack the target monsters. This also adds a win condition, but one that is freakishly hard to do on your own. If this works like I think it will, it will force cooperation in clearing out the wilds and winning.

I recommend voting for this proposal in the interests of speeding up gameplay. If there is a major bug, definitely vote against it, but in any other case, patching later is a better fix.

The time, tracked in the Dungeon Master’s Inventory in the GNDT, is either Daytime or Nighttime.

If they have not done so in 44 hours, the Dungeon Master should set the Time to Nighttime.

Amend “Spawning” by changing the paragraph beginning “If they have not done so” and the following list to read:

If it is Nighttime and they have not done so in 2 hours, the Dungeon Master should perform the following action, called Respawning:

* Establish the ideal monster population (IMP) as the number of active Adventurers plus two.
* If there are a number of monsters in the wilds is equal to or greater than the IMP, create a blog post to this effect. Otherwise:
** Spawn monsters until the number of monsters in the wilds is equal to the IMP count the number of creatures in each wild
** Create a blog post describing all monsters created in this Atomic Action and how many are in each wild.
* Set the Time to Daytime.

Amend “Hunting” by changing “and are located in a Wilds,” to “are located in a Wilds, and it is Daytime,”

This should give a bit of warning to players so that they have a better idea of when to pack up.

*An adventurer who camps with this item looses an additional 2 Hit Points for each squid thingy larva in their inventory
*If an adventurer reaches 0 hit points with this item in their inventory, add two squid thingies to their location

Sunday, March 10, 2019

A rather uneventful day passes. A goblin and a boar die and an attempt is made at another goblin’s life. The adventurers go to sleep that night knowing that any disembodied force that might be guiding their hunt would be displeased.

Yet another cockroach surfaces in the cave. Fortunately, no one is around for it to annoy with its screeching. A mouse of the strangest variety lights up the ruins.

When dawn breaks, three adventurers realize they haven’t set up camp and are therefore in for a rather unproductive day.

A Quest has a hero, which is an adventurer, A Target, which is a monster type, and a Locale, witch is a location. It may be written [X] wishes to slay a [Y] at [Z], where [X] is the hero, [Y] is the target, and [Z] is the locale.

If a monster of the quest’s target has been in the quest’s location for 48 hours at the time the quest’s hero removes that monster as a result of hunting it, the quest’s hero has achieved victory

Quests are tracked in a section of the bestiary labeled “quests”

Add to the rule “Monsters”:

Monsters with 10 hit points or more are considered to be “epic”

Add as a modifier to “Cryptic Clue”

*If an adventurer has two cryptic clues they may remove both from their inventory and create a quest with themselves as its hero, a random epic monster type as its target, and a random wild as its locale

The 48 hour waiting period is do allow other adventurers to interfere with the quest. The game should not be won by whoever is best at checking in immediately after a re-spawn.

Thursday, March 07, 2019

Finally, one of the worms in the canyon has been slain. Adventurers pokes and derrick allegedly teamed up today against one, deafening it with captured shrieks and then strangling it. The two other adventurers in town listen to pokes tell the story and then each tell theirs. The three eventually drift off into sleep—the only place, it seems, not crawling with monsters.

That night, a spider crawls into the Canyon and yet more bats and goblins find their way to Shadow Mountain. You’d think that they would learn to stay away from the Adventurers’ stomping grounds.

Derrick and Rufio, the poor souls, being unable to make it back to town, are forced to sleep in the most monster-infested areas of the explored wilds. They both will wake up battered.

Add to the Bestiary a monster with the name “Necromancer”, a hit point value of 10, a frequency of 2, an ecology of “All”, spoils of “Dark staff (5), Shadowy Tome (5), crystal ball (5), Cryptic Clue (5), Curse (5)”, a description of “A mad wizard corrupted by death magic” and the modifier “A necromancer may not be targeted in a hunt if a restless dead is in the same wilds as it”.

Add to the Bestiary a monster with the name “Restless Dead”, a hit point value of 6, a frequency of 5, an ecology of “All”, spoils of Monster Bones(8) a description of “A corpse that’s still moving around”, and one modifier of “*after a respawn, if a Necromancer is in a wilds and a restless dead is not, move the restless dead to a randomly chosen wilds with a necromancer in it”

Add to the market place an item named “Shadowy Tome” with the description “A tome of arcane magic, much of questionable origin”, and the modifiers “*Scavenging power:3, *When used roll Dice10 and on a 5 or lower the adventurer gains a Curse”

Add to the market place an item named “Dark staff” with the description “The tainted weapon of a tainted “, and the modifiers “*Attack power:4, *When used roll Dice10 and on a 5 or lower the adventurer gains a Curse”

Add to the market place an item named “Crystal Ball” with the description “A tool for seeing the future, the past or far away”, and the modifiers “*when taking damage during camping, reduce the damage taken by 1”

Add to the market place an item named “Curse” with the description “Dark Magic formed of malevolence and attached to an individual”, and the modifiers “*A curse may not be given to another adventurer, *A adventurer with three curses has their health set to zero”

remove all the bullet points in the description of respawning that reference “Each Adventurer” or “Every Adventurer”.

change:

and create a blog post describing all monsters created in this step.

to:

count the number of creatures in each wild, and create a blog post describing all monsters created in this step and listing how many are in each wild.

Add to the rule “Spawning”:

Camping is an atomic action consisting of the following steps:
*The adventurer sets their Support to 0.
*The adventurer sets their AP to 4.
*If in town, the adventurer sets their health to default.
*If in a wilds, the adventurer decreases their health by the number of monsters in that wild at the time of the last respawn

Camping may be performed by an adventurer once between any two respawns. An adventurer who has not camped since the last respawn may camp but may not take any other dynastic actions.

Tuesday, March 05, 2019

Create a new section of the Ruleset titled “Spells” with the following text:

The [[Spellbook]] page is ordained for Spell tracking.
In the Spellbook, there is a list of Spells. Each Spell has a name, a level which is a positive integer, a Casting Cost (CC) which is a positive integer, and zero or more modifiers. Spells in this list are always arranged in ascending order of level. The Spellbook also contains a list of each Adventurer and their known Spells.
Spells cannot have an Attack Power.
Spells with a Scavenging Power are not considered Tools. Such spells must be cast individually for each item whose roll an Adventurer wishes to increase, but they be cast after rolling.
At any time, an Adventurer in the Town may spend 2 AP to add a Spell to their known Spells if their Magic is equal to or greater than that Spell’s level.
At any time, an Adventurer may select one of their known Spells and spend a number of AP equal to its casting cost to Cast the spell, applying all effects described in the Spell’s modifiers. During a Hunt, an Adventurer may only Cast a Spell if that Spell’s modifiers specify that it can be Cast during a Hunt. Spells still cost AP to Cast even if used during a Hunt.

Add a new page to the Wiki called “Spellbook” with the following text:

== Known Spells by Adventurer ==
Allo:
derrick:
naught:
Oracular rufio:
pokes:
Trigon:
Zaphod:
== List of Spells ==
=== Brain Boost—Level 1—CC 1===
*If you gained Experience from Supporting one or more of another Adventurers’ successful Hunts since the last Respawn, increase your Experience by the amount you gained from Supporting one of those Hunts.

=== Ymehcla—Level 1—CC 2 ===
*Scavenging Power: X
*When you cast this spell, destroy any number of coins in your Inventory. X is equal to one tenth the amount of coins you destroyed, rounding down.
*May be cast during a Hunt

=== Siren Call—Level 2—CC 2 ===
*Establish the Pool as the set of all monster types from those in the List of Monsters whose Ecology matches your Location. Randomly choose a monster type from the Pool with the probability for each being that type’s frequency over the sum of all type’s frequency. Add a Monster of that type to your Location.

=== Sacrifice—Level 3—CC 0 ===
*Decrease your health by 6 and increase your AP by 2
*Cannot be used by an Adventurer with 0 AP

=== Enlarge—Level 3—CC 2 ===
* Set the hit points of a Monster in your Location to double the current value, rounding up. Denote this by adding “(HP: X)” after that Monster’s listing in your Location, where X is the new hit point value.

=== Minimize—Level 4—CC 3 ===
*Set the hit points of a Monster in your Location to half the current value, rounding up. Denote this by adding “(HP: X)” after that Monster’s listing in your Location, where X is the new hit point value.

To the bottom of the “Spawning” section of the Ruleset, add the following:

*Remove any parenthetical notations or modifiers from all monsters in the Wilds

If the name of any Spell outlined in this Proposal appears in ALL CAPS in a number of EVC’s equal to or greater than quorum, do not add that Spell to the List of Spells.

Making Magic a useful thing to have. And also, having spells would be fun.

remove all the bullet points in the description of respawning that reference “Each Adventurer” or “Every Adventurer”.

change:

and create a blog post describing all monsters created in this step.

to:

count the number of creatures in each wild, and create a blog post describing all monsters created in this step and listing how many are in each wild.

Add to the rule “Spawning”:

An adventurer who has not camped since the last respawn may not take any other dynastic actions. Camping is an atomic action consisting of the following steps:
*The adventurer sets their Support to 0.
*The adventurer sets their AP to 4.
*If in town, the adventurer sets their health to default.
*If in a wilds, the adventurer decreases their health by the number of monsters in that wild at the time of the last respawn

This should reduce the load on our noble game master. As a side effect, it allows adventurers to save health by giving up their turn, but the more I think about it, the less likely it is to do anything other than trap someone with a lot of stuff under a pile of numbers, hoping someone will rescue them. And that sounds like good gameplay.

Sunday, March 03, 2019

In the “Levels” section of the Ruleset, change the sentence “An Adventurer’s Exp Goal is ten times their level” to:

An Adventurer’s Exp Goal is equal to twice their level plus 3.

Under “Hearty Meal” in the Marketplace’s List of Items, remove the current modifier and replace it with:

*An Adventurer may destroy this item to increase their AP by 4.

Under the “Hunting” section of the Ruleset, remove the step which reads “Decrease the Hunting Adventurer’s AP by 2.” At the end of the list of steps under “If the Target is a Monster”, add the following:

**Decrease the Hunting Adventurer’s AP by 2.

At the end of the list of steps under “If the Target is another Adventurer”, add the following:

**Decrease the Hunting Adventurer’s AP by 1.

If “Proposal: More Monsters” has passed, in the Marketplace’s List of Items, change SpikeStick’s Attack Power to 4 and add a modifier to Rabbit’s Foot stating “Can only by used by an Adventurer with magic 2 or higher.”
If a quorum of EVC’s contain the phrase “Bring it on!”, instead indicate an Adventurer’s Exp Goal as “thrice their level.”
If a quorum of EVC’s contain the phrase “Starve the children!”, instead indicate that a Hearty Meal increases AP by 3.

Readjusting Experience as per popular demand and making Supporting a more valid option. Hearty Meal seems like a strong item, but remember that it takes a few Hunts and a trade to acquire, even with coins, so it is a net loss of AP in exchange for a more convenient “double-turn.” Also a last-ditch compromise to get Trolls and Rabbits in without needing a re-post.

A monster also has a description, which is text and defaults to “”, and zero or more modifiers. Modifiers are considered rules text that apply only to that monster type. In a section of the bestiary named “appendix” descriptions are tracked as italics after the name of the monster type, and modifiers are tracked as a list of bullet points after the description.

When you enacted Level Up! you named the rule the wrong thing, and also did not update the GNDT with the new columns. I think I am owed 3 experience, since I hunted before realizing that proposal had been enacted.

Zaphod returns to Town on the fifth day, dejected. Apparently Cockroaches are harder to kill than Boars. They become the first adventurer from the party to visit the weaponsmith.

Back in the wilds, the hunt continues. The newcomer to the party slays a bat to prove their worth, but no one is around to see it, so they scavenge alone. Pokes discovers the easiest way to kill cockroaches: crushing them. Naught “accidentally” murders a disabled goblin by tripping him.

The adventurers make camp, but monsters gather. The adventurers in the Cave attract another worm. A cockroach wanders into the canyon. A boar gets lost in the forest, and a bat flies to the mountain.

In the night, these new monsters, as well as the rest of the old cast, attack. Those in the Cave and the Canyon are hurt the most.

What is this?

BlogNomic is an online Nomic: a self-modifying game
where changing the rules is part of the game. Players make blog posts proposing additions or alterations to the ruleset, discussing
and casting votes in the
comments: if enough vote in favour, the rules are changed and play continues.

The game has been running since 2003 and resets every month or so. New players are always welcome and
can join in at any time.

"Nomic is a game in which changing the rules is a move. In that respect it differs from almost every other game. The primary activity of Nomic is proposing changes in the rules, debating the wisdom of changing them in that way, voting on the changes, deciding what can and cannot be done afterwards, and doing it. Even this core of the game, of course, can be changed."